Coping Mechanisms
by Diablolita
Summary: The distance from war to a happy ending is vast and ugly. Close to a year after the final battle, our heroes make their final public appearance for the wizarding press. While the world sees them as shining conquerors, they all carry darkness within them now and it manifests itself in varying, but altogether shameful ways. Rated M for sex and adult themes.


"Ahem! Oi, is anyone out there?"

The crowd roars with laughter and a few 'Here we are! Here we are!'s. The man, who previously had his back turned to the crowd, finally turns to face them.

"Oh, _there _you all are. Wonderful, wonderful. Dear me, I fear I might be getting a bit daft in my old age."

More laughter.

"We have a marvelous show for you all tonight, as you well know. We've got — Miriam Birchneff, you absolute trollop, what _are _you wearing?"

"Something you couldn't afford, honey!"

The crowd hoots at the banter. Someone whoops at the woman as she presses her wrinkled cleavage together.

"Oh my, do think of the children next time you leave the house Miriam. Ah, sorry, none of you want to hear a couple of oldies babble on, eh? I think you want to see some people who are perhaps a bit more special? You know them, you love them, you may owe them your very lives, please welcome...our heroes!"

The man gestures behind himself with a flourish. The crowd positively erupts as Harry, holding Ginny's hand, enters the stage from one side as Ron, holding Hermione's hand, enters from the other. They are all wearing small, practiced smiles as they gather together. Hermione totters a bit in her heels, and Ron rights her up. She smiles at him warmly and a few women nearest to them sigh in envy of their obvious love.

"Now, the introductions are a mere formality," the man goes on, "since I'm quite sure you're all familiar with these," he tears up a bit as he looks at them, "these brave, brave wizards and witches here. But nonetheless! Introduce them, I shall. First, Ronald Bilius Weasley!"

Ron steps forward and smiles sheepishly at the applause.

"Resilience personified. That is the greatest way to explain this young man, I believe. His wonderful spirit and light is known all throughout the wizarding world. In times of crisis, you can count on Ron here to make you laugh so hard you'll piss yourself!"

Ron's face turns red but he smiles broadly and shrugs.

"Yes, light. Ron is the light in times of darkness."

* * *

"Tosser!"

"You're pissed, mate. You've had enough."

"I'll tell you who's had enough. Your mother's cunt when I'm done with her tonight."

The bartender sighs.

"Go home, Ron."

"Not until you give me another drink."

"No."

"Do you — do you know what I've been through?"

Ron leans across the bar to get in the man's face. He's a mess: hair disheveled, eye starting to bruise from a previous fight, mouth slack. But the real ugliness came from his expression. Only those who have truly suffered could look at another human with such nastiness.

"Do you know what I've seen? What I've lost? So that you could stay home and have a nice cuppa before bed without being slaughtered in your sleep? You owe me. You all owe me."

The bartender sighs again. He fills up a pint and hands it to him.

"Last one. Then you're gone."

Ron smiles brokenly.

"Ah, cheers mate. Bloody appreciate it."

He tosses him a galleon and returns to his empty table.

It had become a common sight to see Ron at pubs. Plural, because he was never at the same one for long, as they would bar him from entry after a while. They really did let him keep coming for longer than they should have; he was a war hero, after all. A veteran. No one wants that guilt weighing on them. But then Harry Potter would come round and have a word with the owners and, well, that would be the end of that.

Ron slurps his drink. The drinking started a couple months after the war, and never really stopped. He'd be fine during the days, of course. A wonderful friend, a supportive brother, a loving boyfriend, nobody argued that. But the nights. The nights were a different story.

Hermione would beg him not to go, and Ron would kiss her on the forehead and then again on the nose. He would say he was just meeting some friends, honest, they weren't even going to any pubs. She would bite the inside of her cheek and glare at him. They both knew it was never true. He didn't have any friends besides her and Harry. Nobody else ever knows what to say to him.

The ironic thing was, he didn't even like drinking, not really. It made his stomach uneasy and he didn't enjoy feeling out of control of his body. But when he was pissed, he stopped seeing Fred's dead body, lying on the ground. Harry's dead body, held in Hagrid's arms. He stopped hearing Hermione's tortured screams. That was worth all the discomfort in the world.

* * *

"Hermione Jean Granger!"

Hermione steps forward, and the crowd cheers with equal gusto.

"Brilliant, beautiful, and loyal to the end. Without her sharp mind, we'd all be in very deep trouble indeed. Ms. Granger is a sensationally rare breed of witch. And, I have learned, the Miss is turning into a Missus very soon!"

The crowd gasps in delight.

"Yes, yes! I just learned today, Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley here are engaged to be married!"

Hermione smiles politely and holds up her left hand, showing off a humble diamond. The audience weeps with joy and adoration, and when Ron kisses her cheek lovingly, they cry even harder.

"And what an exquisite marriage I am sure it will be! Loyalty, ladies and gentlemen, is a trait not often come across in abundance, so when it is found, it must be treasured. I daresay, we should all aspire to have half as much loyalty inside of us, as Ms. Granger has in one little finger."

* * *

"Fuck! Harry!"

Harry thrusts up hard against Hermione. Her back is against the wall, his hand is around her throat. It's rough. It's always rough.

She didn't love him. Well, she did, but not in the way you're supposed to love a person before letting them fuck the life out of you on a regular basis. But she had her demons to exorcise and so did he. It seemed right almost, that they would find escape in each other. It's ridiculous how much of her young life had centered around Harry Potter, The Boy Who Barely Lived. She would have laughed over it except it wasn't funny. It wasn't funny that she was cheating on the man she loved with his best friend, it wasn't funny that she could barely get through a night without a panic attack, and it certainly wasn't funny when Harry's cock hit her in just _that_ place that always made her scream.

His mouth claims hers. And that's what it is: a claim. Out there, in the real world, they both belonged to other people. Hell, they belonged to the entire wizarding world, in a way. Nothing was truly their own. But here, with his fingers slipped inside her mouth and his dick driving into her, together they had turned their backs on goodness, morality, the world. Every dark thought, every touch, every fuck was a proclamation that the world had hurt them and they're hurting it right back.

Of course, when you're out to hurt the world, it's never the right people that feel the pain. And yet it seemed a worthy sacrifice. Harry was her best friend, she loved him in a way she didn't know how to define, and she almost lost him. Now she has a new way to know him, a way that not even death can ever take from her. She found out how much he liked control. She found out how much she liked being controlled.

His fingers leave her mouth and reach down to circle her clit. She moans and gasps, cries his name brokenly.

"You like that?" he teases, his teeth nipping at her neck.

"Y—yes! Oh, God..." He must sense that she's close because he slows down his pace, removes his hand from her clit to grope her breast roughly enough to leave marks.

"Whore," he says, smiling against her lips, and she laughs.

(Sometimes it feels like they're normal teenagers.)

"You're not supposed to laugh," he complains, still smiling as he kisses her. He bites down on her bottom lip and tugs slightly.

"You're not supposed to be shagging me," she responds breathlessly. She doesn't know why she always challenges him like this, as if this was all his fault. He pulls back to stare at her, his green eyes suddenly flat. If he were anyone else, his expression would have frightened her.

(But most of the time, they know that they aren't.)

He pushes her hard onto the bed. Her naked body touches the familiar silk material of his sheets and her nipples tighten, anticipating what's to come. She tries to roll onto her back but he holds her down, draws her legs up. He plunges into her from behind, and Hermione cries out at the suddenness. He grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks hard; her head cranks back and it scares her how much she loves it. He fucks her mercilessly, relentlessly. It feels so good she thinks she might die.

"Take it, Hermione."

She marvels at his composure the second before she loses all of hers. She comes hard, screaming his name again and again. He hoists her up by the shoulders so that her back is against his chest and continues to slam into her, prolonging her orgasm that feels like dying and salvation at the same time.

He flips her over before pumping in her a few more times to reach his own orgasm. He always wants to watch her face when he comes inside of her. She's never sure what he sees there.

Whenever Hermione is alone, three things constantly occupy her thoughts. First, she wonders when exactly she had become a bad person. Her usually infallible sense of logic completely fails her when it came to subjects such as this; interpersonal social relationships, romance, and more to the point, sex. She floundered with it all, undoubtedly the price to be paid for excelling in other endeavors of the mind.

Second, she thinks about Ron. She worries for him, loves him. Fears that she'll lose him if he ever discovers what's been going on behind his back. Knows he'll never understand that after years of being Hermione and Ron _and _Harry, she can't let him go. She needs them both. She feels like a selfish child for it.

And finally, when she's not thinking about RonAndHarry RonAndHarry, she thinks about the way her parents flinch every time they see her wand. How when she looks down at her plate at dinner, she catches them watching her closely, terrified of her. As if she'll obliviate them again because they irked her that day. She thinks about an incident where she had moved her arm quickly to stop a plate from falling, and in response, her mother gasped aloud and fell to her knees. It should have made her feel sad or even sympathetic, but all it did was exasperate her. In that moment, she called her mother a Muggle under her breath in a way synonymous with 'idiot.' Hermione still cries about it every day.

* * *

"Miss Ginevra Weasley!"

Ginny steps forward. Again, the crowd reacts with cheers, but this time, more than a few men gaze at her, love-struck. Or, more likely, lust-struck. But there isn't much of a difference.

"Here she is, here she is. As we all know, the dazzling Ms. Weasley has been the object of our young hero's affection for quite some time...and so I've heard, quite a few other handsome wizards as well."

There's snickering in the audience and Ginny struggles to keep a smile on her face. Delegated to the role of girlfriend of the hero. Again.

"It's a compliment, my dear, I promise! Your beauty is positively _legendary_. And without your affections, I'm confident that young Harry here would never have found the drive to make it through his fateful journey. Am I right, lads? You lot would overthrow a dark lord for her any day, wouldn't ya?"

Men whoop in agreement and whistle at her. Harry's fists clench, but not as tightly as Ginny's do.

"But in all seriousness, we cannot overlook the loss Ginny has suffered of her dear brother. She has handled it with impeccable grace, and we are all in complete awe of you, my dear girl."

* * *

The tip of Ginny's wand glows hot. She presses it into her hand, hisses at the pain. She takes it away, observes her palm, and casts a healing charm on the black circle it left behind. Lights the wand again. She's been at this for almost an hour.

She's sitting in Fred's bed, wearing his old Quidditch jersey. Presses the tip of her wand to her hand. It burns terribly but still no tears come, which was the whole point of this. She never cried over Fred either, not even at his funeral. Emotional pain, she doesn't cry. Physical pain, she doesn't cry. What she used to think was strength formed after a lifetime living with insensitive brothers now strikes her as a possibly serious emotional disturbance. But Harry likes that she doesn't cry, and she likes that he likes that.

"Ginny? Sweetheart? I'm...Why don't you come downstairs? I just made some tea and fresh biscuits."

"Not everything can be solved with food, you silly old cow."

Molly tries not to look hurt, but she doesn't succeed. She withers under Ginny's glare.

"You're not the only one hurting, Ginny. I lost a son."

"You've got plenty more."

Ginny stands up to Apparate. Maybe to go see Harry, maybe to go be alone, she isn't sure. But the sight of her mother crying infuriates her and she can't resist one last dig.

"Don't be such a woman."

A sudden _pop!_ and she's gone.

She opens her eyes to Grimmauld Place. It was as ugly and dark as ever, and it didn't look like Harry was there. She steps forward and accidentally bumps into a desk. A hideous vase falls over from her impact and crashes to the floor.

Fury wells up inside of her and she shrieks at the vase as if it was Voldemort himself. When Harry found her later (minutes later, hours later, who knew?), she was still screaming.

* * *

"And finally, the man at the center of that terrible war. The man that your children and your children's children will tell tales about. The one true savior of the wizarding world...HARRY POTTER!"

Harry steps forward. If the crowd was loud when the others were announced, it was nothing compared to this. The noise could burst eardrums. Men, women and children alike were openly sobbing. The rest were cheering with almost religious fervor.

"Without Harry, all that we know and care for, would be utterly lost. Inside of this man, is all the goodness of the world."

* * *

He was mostly surprised by how lost he was.

The guilt he expected, welcomed even. Blaming himself was like a nasty old friend; a terrible infliction upon your life, but also a strange comfort. No, it wasn't the self-hatred that was unbearable. Before now, he always had a road stretched before him. Even when he wasn't conscious of his proverbial fate of becoming a dead man, he still had a predetermined plan. Go to school. Protect his loved ones. Defeat Voldemort. Try not to implode in the process. Now it's over, he had fulfilled his destiny at the tender age of seventeen, and he imagines he feels how every other man in the world feels. Free to make his own decisions, form his own path.

He's not sure if he likes it.

Life used to be so vital. Every drawn breath was a miracle. And now colors were neutral, food was bland, sex was routine. Well, maybe not with Hermione. There was still danger there, and he craved it. He still didn't understand why he was always so rough with her, while he never felt the urge to do anything above making love sweetly to Ginny. Maybe it just added to the much needed adrenaline. But the moment after he empties himself inside Hermione the dullness always returns, and returns with a vengeance. He muses that this must be what addiction feels like. Enough is never really enough.

Dully was the best way to describe his initial reaction to the news of their engagement. A ghost of something briefly flared up inside his chest when Hermione told him, but it quelled when he saw the contentment on her face. It still didn't sit quite right with him though.

"You're both so young."

Hermione laughs. "It will be a long engagement, trust me."

"Then why even do it now? Why not wait?"

"Because we need something to look forward to, to hope for. Something solid to hold on to."

Hermione stares out to the ocean. They're sitting in the sand, coats drawn tightly around their bodies. It was always so cold here but it was still one of Harry's favorite places to just sit and think. It was calming and it made him feel as if he was at the center of the world.

The wind whips Hermione's hair around her face and Harry debates tucking a curl behind her ear. His hand twitches to do so but it feels as if it isn't his place. Like that particular act of domestic affection wasn't for him to ever do with her.

She goes on, breaking him of his reverie. "And, you know. Ron and I love each other."

"Do _we_ love each other?"

"Probably."

"Shouldn't we talk about that?"

"Probably."

They say nothing for a moment. Then Harry pushes her down into the sand because he can. For a while he just stays like that; staring down at her, his body hovering slightly above hers. He doesn't even notice that he's breathing hard, behaving like a mad man, especially since she's looking back up at him so calmly. He shakes her by the shoulders, and still she doesn't flinch. He finds it incredible how unafraid of him she is. Doesn't she know what his hands have done? It almost makes him laugh.

Instead he kisses her fiercely. Her sea-chapped lips instinctively part, and he licks inside her mouth. He tastes her guilt, her anger, her love. At least, he's pretty sure it's love.

"Don't marry him."

"Harry..."

He raises her arms above her head and parts her thighs with his knee. With his left hand holding her wrists together, his right snakes down under her jeans, under her knickers, finds her clit. Her eyes close and she arches against him. A surge of possessiveness courses through him when she does.

"You're mine."

She opens her eyes again slowly, and her breath comes in small whimpers as he continues to rub the hard nub between her legs. He loved when he made her make those sounds. Especially if they were somewhere they could be caught. He slips two fingers inside of her slick heat and she shudders.

"Say it. Say you're mine."

She starts to say something, but it turns into a moan as his fingers pick up speed. When she does answer, her voice is soft, almost pitying.

"Oh, Harry. Don't you have enough?"

Her reply surprises him so much it causes him to actually jerk his fingers inside of her much harder than he ever intended, ever dared, and her whole body shakes beneath him as she comes.

Harry rolls off her and stares at the gray sky, suppressing a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. All he can hear are the waves crashing and Hermione gasping beside him. No, he didn't have enough, he decided.

He wasn't sure if he had anything.

* * *

"Now, I'm afraid our young heroes have announced that this will be their last public appearance they will _ever _make regarding the war."

The audience gasps in horror. A few people shout 'No!' in disappointment.

"I know, I know. But it's been almost a year now, and I'm sure they will be wanting to put this mess behind them."

The audience nods solemnly. Yes, they understood. The past is the past, best to leave it there.

"But, Harry here wants to say a few parting words. Harry?"

Harry stands next to the announcer. The audience seems to stand up straighter and straighter the closer he gets to them.

Harry clears his throat before he speaks.

"By now, I'm sure you've all heard every detail of the war. Every name of every death. And of how much my friends and I have been involved in ending Voldemort's reign."

It's utterly silent except for Harry's voice.

"And I appreciate all of the support I have been given. But there is one last thing you can all do for me."

A woman's voice from the crowd rings out.

"Anything! We'd do anything for you!"

Harry's eyes blaze.

"Leave me the fuck alone."

He turns his back on the stunned audience, seizes Ginny's hand, and walks off the stage. Hermione and Ron follow closely behind.

* * *

They all loathe the word hero.


End file.
